Solving time: 32:18
The harder of the two on offer today. Possibly obscure animal and nymph and a rare foray into popular dance. Still very enjoyable.
On advice, this puzzle’s still on the Club site and the only one in the paper, so I’m going ahead with the post. Hope this doesn’t do any damage.
Alec
Across
1. PURCHASE. Which would be CHA (tea) in a PURSE (bag).
5. GAMBOL. Anagram of MOB inside GAL.
9. KINKAJOU. KIN (family) and OU containing K,A,J (card honours). “An arboreal nocturnal fruit-eating mammal with a prehensile tail and a long tongue, found in the tropical forests of Central and South America”. ODO.
10. DUBLIN. That is: D{o}UBLIN’. The joke about the Irish waiter, I shall omit.
12. OFF THE RECORD. OFF (wrong), T (time), HERE (present), COR (my), D. Take the “minute” vis-à-vis meeting records.
15. NADIR. Anagram of RAIN inc D (died). For some reason, I always mistake this with its opposite, apotheosis.
16. IBUPROFEN. Anagram: one burp if.
18. CRUSTACEA. CRUST, ACE, A.
19. SCREE. SCREE{d}; “a levelled layer of material (e.g. cement) applied to a floor or other surface”. ODO.
20. INTERMISSION. IN (during), TERM, IS, SION.
24. THETIS. “Thetas” with I for A. See title.
25. VLADIMIR. VR (Victoria Regina) inc LAD, I, MI (note). The literal is just “Russian”.
26. DO(TAG)E.
27. I DARE SAY. I’D and AY (always) inc ARES; cf MARS.
Down
1. POKY. P, OK{a}Y.
2. {g}RIND.
3. HEAD FIRST. HEAD (teacher), FIRST (best class of, say, Honours).
4. SHORT CIRCUIT. Two indications; the second fanciful.
6. ABUSE. BUS inside A and E (Accident and Emergency).
7. BILL OF FARE. ILL-OFF (presumably the opposite of “well-off”) inside BARE (sparse).
8. LINE DANCER. Two indications; the first fanciful. See title.
11. REGULAR SOLID. Or: REGULARS, OLID.
13. UNSCRIPTED. N, SCRIPT inside an anagram of DUET.
14. AD,JUST,MEN,T. With the T from {expec}T.
17. RESPONDER. {g}R{e}E{n}S, PONDER.
21. RUING. RUNG (step) outside 1.
22. A,MOS{t}.
23. FRAY. Two indications; both literal.
Thanks for all your blogs and comments, Mctext. You’ll be missed.
I’m pleased you got to sign off with a blog after all, mc. Do you know how many that makes?
At least if I don’t need to blog this one I won’t have to reveal my inability to spell CRUSTACEA even with helpful wordplay, making my time of 20’7″ rather irrelevant. Otherwise, this was a spookily similar experience to the other one, an inability to get anything in the NW, and a quick fill down the Eastern approaches.
I would parsed AMOS differently – something to do with MO(S), even several of them still being a brief time, but of course McT is right.
CoT(omorrow) to KINKAJOU just for trying. PURCHASE was also both clever and amusing.
Once the Club is dead, I suspect I shall need neither of the Murdochs. Rupert has never chucked a cent into the University named after his uncle Walter. The latter was a far better man. He was told of the naming as he was dying — I visited the site of his bush honeymoon when he was well into his 80s — and he said “it had better be a good one”. The University, not the honeymoon; though no doubt … ! Sadly, gone to the dogs these days.
Edited at 2014-05-28 07:39 am (UTC)
Loved OFF THE RECORD for the def.
Alec. 128 thank yous. And I really hope we see you around regularly. Cheers.
Edited at 2014-05-28 08:12 am (UTC)
I live pretty close to Murdoch Uni myself. Close enough to be distressed by the “road to nowhere” that’s about to be driven through our wetlands. Another initiative of our Murdoch-sponsored government.
Anyway this one was quite hard and I was reasonably happy to finish it in 49 minutes without resort to aids although there were a couple of unknowns to deal with along the way. I thought 1ac was rather good. Couldn’t find REGULAR SOLID as such in any of the usual sources and even Wikipedia redirects it to ‘Platonic solid’ which for some reason amuses me as an expression, but let’s not go there.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/regular%20solid
So that people therefore don’t inadvertently stumble on this blog if they’ve not done the puzzle (which is not in the paper anyone) it might be idea if it was taken down temporarily.
Richard Rogan
Times Crossword Editor
Cheers
Chris
Barbara
I don’t mind the guy who posts the things making “a very rare mistake” – that’s life. It’s the guy who checks everything that regularly gets things wrong – might that be the editor?
Sorry to see you go McT and best wishes for the future
All the best McT and thank you for the past assistance.
Sorry to hear you’re retiring, McT. So long and thanks for all the fish.
“I can ride a kangaroo (yeh, yeh)
Make kinkajou stew (yeh, yeh)
I’m a big disgrace to the Aborigine race
My boomerang won’t come back!”
All the best McT, even if you are a rednose.
Took me 45 minutes, more than double yesterday’s time. My only nit-pick concerns the clue to 27: there was a time when God (with a capital G) would not have been used to indicate “Ares”; not blasphemy, more a question of the done thing. The clues otherwise were very neat; particularly liked 1 across and 12.
Thanks and best wishes to McT; every time I saw the guitar, I said to myself: “Must get down my old Guild Starfire II from the attic and play a bit of rock ‘n’ roll”. Perhaps I shall today.
FOI GAMBOL, LOI SHORT CIRCUIT. Nothing really stands out for a COD.
Thetis unknown but gettable. Kinkajou I did know.
I’m not convinced that the tea bag clue really works and I don’t really get the def for off the record.
McT, so long, and thanks for all the
fishblogsBest wishes from Chinon
Mike and Fay
Luckily I seemed to be on the setter’s wavelength (more or less), as I was still feeling very tired, so my time (10:35) wasn’t a disaster.
With the words “minute? No” in 12ac and the checked letters of the third word in place, I was almost certain it was going to be SECOND (rather than RECORD).
LOI was PURCHASE. The clue (in exactly that form) looked as if it might be an old chestnut, but the nearest I can find in recent years is “Buy tea in bag (8)” in No. 23,093 (28 Sept. 2005).
Another straightforward, enjoyable solve.